Specter's Judgement (Death's Vengeance)

Tyene: I'm warning you, you're going to hurt yourself.

Wanda: (stubbornly) I have to deal with my crazy feels somehow, don't I? Why not by channelling them into stories?

Tyene: (sighs) I keep telling you, you never listen...neither of us own Harry Potter.

Chapter 1

Death was something that happened to other people.

Harry hadn't remembered the last time he'd been able to entertain such fanciful thinking. He'd been surrounded by death ever since he was a year old, when his parents were murdered trying to protect him from a man who wanted to kill him. When he was four he had witnessed a car crash. In his first year he had come face to face with the monster who had tried to kill him as a baby, and had killed his parents to that end. He met the man again, in his second year, as a memory who had been trying to kill every muggleborn in the school. In his third year he had to confront the serial killer who had betrayed his parents and killed thirteen people with a single spell.

And that didn't even account for the Dementors, basilisk, giant spiders, three-headed dogs and trolls that he had to fend off or escape from on a regular basis. The Tri-Wizard tournament had only served to escalate these attacks, allowing him to add Dragons, Mermen, mutations and other students to the list of creatures that had tried to kill him.

Then, at the end of the tournament, Cedric had died – been murdered right before his eyes. After that, Dementors had attacked him in the last place that Dumbledore had said was safe for him, and defending himself had resulted in him standing a trail that could have just as easily killed him – or at least made it much easier on the one who wanted him dead. Then Arthur Weasley had nearly died...no, Harry was familiar with death. He had begun to wonder when everyone else around him would die; it seemed, to him, to be due course. He woke up every morning, wondering if today was going to be worse than yesterday, wondering what bad news could be brought to the fore.

Of course, that depended on when he heard any actual news. Depending on the mood of the one controlling the mail, he either knew much more than he should be able to shoulder at his age, or he knew absolutely nothing about crucial information, which more often then not got him into even bigger messes than knowing did.

His entire life had seemed to just be one bad day after another, with no real release, no real safety and no real freedom.

Ten years in a cupboard had effectively destroyed his childhood, and left several brittle pieces to be picked up and awkwardly put back together when he was taken into another world. He was demeaned, called a freak, and attention-seeking liar, a cheater, and a host of other things that he had grown weary of reciting, none of which seemed to reflect the boy who actually existed. The other world had seemed like a magical place indeed when he had first stepped into it.

But that had changed too, hadn't it?

You'd think that other world would be a safe haven, but it wasn't.

Corruption and decadence was simmering in the streets and rotted away at the foundations of the government. He'd been under constant assassination attempts, he'd been abandoned by someone he considered his best friend over something that he hadn't even done. He'd been glared at and bullied relentlessly by a few of his teachers, and everyone else expected him to be some sort of Messianic Archetype.

He'd watched people die, he'd seen his own friends turn on him over petty jealously or actual belief that he had done whatever he was accused of. Leaving him alone, with his loneliness and pain.

Loneliness and pain were no strangers to him; they had been by his side for as long as he could remember, his only constant companions.

All of that – all of it. That was all before his own death.

He could practically see his tombstone in his mind's eye – Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, son of James and Lily Potter, 1981 – 1996. Just fifteen years old. A fifth year, dead in the Department of Mysteries, having been caught up in a Fiendfyre curse.

He wondered what was being said at his funeral; if he had gotten a funeral at all, considering that they wouldn't have been able to find his body.

He wondered if any of the things being said about him were the truth, or if it was all just part of the manufactured tale that was the Boy-Who-Lived, a story that both sides told and neither of which held a grain of truth in them. If it was one-sided stories told by people who had resented him. If anyone who actually still believed in him had come forward. If the people who said they believed in him had said anything at all. He wasn't sure at this point...he'd always had to do everything alone.

None of them had been there for him when he had truly needed it. The last few times he had managed to escape a harsh end by the skin of his teeth, but it seemed that the Grim Reaper had finally caught up and collected his due.

It was funny, he was still thinking like when he had been alive. What must be happening at Hogwarts and among the Order of the Phoenix? After all, the venerated Headmaster had lost his most important weapon, all over one little prophecy that he hadn't even heard before he died.

He imagined the amount of propaganda generated by his death, used by the people who hated him, the people who had expected him to win the war for them, the people who had actually believed in him...his former friends. Just about anyone, actually. He could imagine the strife and chaos in the world he had left behind...at least, now that Voldemort was (possibly) out in the open. And even then, would anyone put up any meaningful resistance? Or would they all fade away or get killed, because they were too afraid to admit the truth?

That was probably how Fudge and Umbridge would go out, though he hadn't ruled out Umbitch taking the side of the Death Eaters so she had an excuse to torture students like him. Maybe Percy was salvageable, but he hadn't lived to see his reaction to Voldemort's return.

Of course, Voldemort would have had to make an appearance for that to have happened. But he doubted that the man would have missed a chance to gloat over having finally killed his irritating nuisance of a roadblock to power. Voldemort was the gloating type. It was the major reason Harry had been able to get away from him before.

Harry had no answers to either of any of the questions he was burning to ask. He wasn't part of the living world anymore.

It was funny, the transition. It wasn't what he had expected it to be; so unlike the nights he had dreamed about it. There had been a single moment of burning agony, and then nothing. Total blackness, and then a tugging sensation as his soul left his body.

He could remember it so clearly. They had been running in the DoM when they realized they had been lead into a trap by Kreacher and Voldemort. Running from the Death Eaters who had demanded the prophecy. Surprise, surprise, Lucius Malfoy had been one of them. Imagine that.

They had split the ground up, firing stunners and every spell that they had learned in DA before turning and running for whatever the nearest exit was. He had lost track of Neville quickly, and had to save Hermione from at least one killing curse before being forced down another alise. All this time all he could think about was 'this is my fault. I brought them here and it was a trap'.

They were running down the hall, himself, Ginny and Luna. The two girls had been the first ones he could find; the others had been separated – or maybe had just left them to the mistake he had made. Harry wasn't sure of anything anymore. One thing he had known is that he would never have forgiven himself if anything had happened to this particular pair of girls.

Ginny was...special...to him, and Luna was her best friend, and someone who had helped him in her own strange way throughout that year.

There was a group of Death Eaters right behind them; he could hear their footsteps. The three of them had tried to loose them, but they proved unshakable. The students cast every spell they could think of, but Bellatrix Lestrange was determined to get that Potter brat.

And then, it had happened, so fast that he hadn't even had a chance to register it.

He heard someone cast a spell he'd never heard before. "Fiendfyre."

He had glanced over his shoulder to see a monstrous creature in the form of flames hurting towards the three of them, eating up everything in its path. He had seen it walk through water without even a shudder. He had known somehow, deep inside him, that this fire was one that could not be stopped. It would destroy him.

There was a tortuous pain in his forehead, like a foreign presence trying in vain to protect itself from an oncoming danger. So he had reached out...

His response had been so natural, he hadn't even realized he was doing it. But then again, his 'saving people thing' as Hermione had once put it always seemed to take president over all rational thought.

He shoved Luna and Ginny into the Floo, and flung powder in shouting the first name that had come to mind – Diagon Alley. He had seen it flare green and the two of them disappear.

He had turned just as the fire bore down on him, feeling strangely at peace with it, and everything came to an end.

He didn't have a chance to react.

But even death, it seemed, didn't keep the sense of purpose away from Harry.

A sensation of need.

As he had drifted off, into the dark ocean of oblivion, floating towards a shining island that might be the afterlife, words floated around him, words that he hadn't said, but seemed to be resonating from within his very soul. Not knowing who or what was listening, but pleading for someone – anything – to listen.

Wait. Please, there's something I still need to do, something only I can do...

..Not for myself! No, not for me...nothing for me. I ask for nothing. It's for the other people. Everyone that I love. They need me for one last thing...Only I can defeat Voldemort...please give me a chance to! Let me fulfil the prophecy made at my birth. Give me a chance, and I'll return here.

And something, somewhere..

...he wasn't sure what...

...had answered him.

%&%&%%&&%%&%&%&%&

Harry was lying on his back on a grey stone floor, staring up at the ceiling. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten here, why he was here, or how long he'd been there. He'd long lost any sense of time or direction, but the sense of puzzlement was still there, a long familiar feeling. He sat up, propped up on his elbows, and looked around.

He was in the middle of a stage in what looked to be a ballroom that had long gone into disrepair. It was tired and rather sad looking, as though it had once been a mighty and popular place. There were chairs lined up against the wall, waiting for an event that would never happen. There was a pedestal for a speaker and a pit for the musicians.

But everything was completely grey, and looked worn and tired. Harry swung his feet off the side of the stage and looked about. The loneliness of the room was what stuck out to him the most, as he looked around, wondering. There was no one else here that he could see, and when he called out, his voice echoed through the ghostly halls to no reply.

That was the only thing that remained consistent, wherever he wandered.

And he had wandered before; there was a grand hall that lead to many other rooms, just as it would have in life. They all held with them their older functions, though they were currently not in use. One was a classroom, another was a prison cell, and yet another was a conference room with empty chairs and an empty blackboard.

Was this the afterlife?

Harry thought it to be very strange, then. He would have thought he'd see his mother and father when he died, not end up alone in a grey mansion. He had wanted to see them again so badly, it was the one good thing about dying. But he hadn't seen them since he had woken up in this strange place, not heard them or anything.

Why a ballroom of all places, anyway?

Sighing, Harry got to his feet again. There was a loud click of sound echoing with his every step as he walked out into the hallway. He turned and looked down it.

It seemed to continue on and on, and there wasn't really any indication that he was supposed to go somewhere. The other rooms he had visited before were exactly as he left them, their doors swung open, waiting for new guests.

Without really knowing what to do, he started walking to the right of the hall instead of the left, to see if he could reach the end of it. It was the first thing that came to his mind. What else was he supposed to do?

Harry walked and walked, still unsure of his destination, but feeling oddly spurred on by something, this funny feeling that someone was waiting for him.

Eventually, he came to a fork in the hallway, with two open doors on either side of him. Surprise, Harry came to a stop. He didn't remember this place.

Then something appeared on the floor of the hall. Something incredibly disturbing. In one of the side rooms, there was a lump of something that seemed to resemble a dead baby, whimpering, burned almost to cinders.

Both repulsed and horrified by the sight, Harry looked away.

"It's a terrible thing, magic. Isn't it?"

Harry turned his head with a start. There was a tall man standing opposite to him, having appeared in between his glance at the awful baby-creature and his approaching of the room. He had silver eyes and long black hair, skin pale as death – though Harry had realized he looked the same way a while ago. He was wearing black robes that hid his entire body, giving him the look of a wandering ranger or samurai, and heavy looking black boots.

Harry took the second-long glance that he could bear at the small being in the next room, before looking back at the stranger. He felt oddly comforted by the man's presence, though he was at loss to explain it.

"What is that?" He asked.

The man sighed heavily. "That, Harry James Potter...is a piece of Tom Riddle's twisted soul. He gave that to you when he tried to kill you as a baby."

Harry stared at the stranger, turning that thought over in his head. He looked back in the room, to where the miserable creature stayed, and realized that it did make sense, to some extent. Voldemort's soul... that was his connection to the man. That was the reason he'd been able to see and feel some of Voldemort's emotions and thoughts, how he could have been given a false vision. He'd been carrying a part of him inside his head all this time.

He would have been disgusted and horrified had he known this when he was alive. Merlin alone knew what he would have done with the information. He'd always been on the impulsive side back then. Those feelings did linger in him still, but they seemed dulled by death, and the knowledge that the thing was separated from him.

He looked back at the man, hoping for a little further explanation. "A piece of his soul?" He asked. "You mean...a soul is something that can be chopped into pieces and hid around the world? I wouldn't have thought..."

"In a sense," The man responded. His voice was a deep baritone, and he looked calm even in the face of this information. "As long as you have your horcruxes, you cannot truly die. Though you sacrifice both your humanity and your afterlife when you do so. It's among the most disgusting magics alive, work of the demons of hell."

"Why'd he do it, then?" Harry asked, finding himself strangely curious. He wondered what could make someone that desperate, especially someone like Voldemort.

"Tom Riddle feared death above everything else." The man continued explaining to Harry, gesturing with one gloved hand to the room with part of Riddle's soul. "Perhaps because he never wanted his reign to end, perhaps because he never wanted to be reunited with the people he had killed. But whatever the reason, he turned his eyes to the darkest of magics, to find a way to extend his life eternally. To magic left by demons to ensnare the unwary souls."

Harry pulled his eyes away from the deformed baby, thoughtful. Voldemort, for all his twisted mind, seemed...almost pitiful, with this information. He had been so afraid of death he was willing to destroy himself completely to avoid it. He wondered what could have pushed Riddle to make such a decision. Was it truly just for power?

Somehow, that made complete sense to him, as he considered all that he had known about the monster and about himself. There were moments with the Dursleys that made Harry fear for his own life. Would he have done something he shouldn't have, if he had known about magic back then? When Harry had lived his life, it had never been an easy one. Sometimes he did feel prepared to do anything to make these dark feelings go away. In some ways, Riddle had been his mirror image, what might have happened to him if he had decided to just let go of everything and worry only for himself.

"That was my connection to Voldemort." He said wonderingly.

"Yes. That was how he could read your mind and send you false images." The man said. He looked a little strange as he glanced at the creature in the room, as though he were thinking of someone he had known. It was a look Harry had seen Dumbledore with a few times over the years.

"You say 'a' piece," Harry repeated slowly, a thought occurring to him with a memory from his second year. He remembered Riddle's diary and how it had possessed his Ginny, used her body to open the chamber of secrets and unleash a basilisk onto the other children at school. That had been a memory of Riddle from back when he was a student. Was that also a horcrux? It had the characteristics of it, and now that he was thinking about it...

"Do you mean to say that he had created more than one?" He asked, turning his head back towards the mysterious black-clad man.

The thought of there being more than one of those deformed creatures existing was one that caused a deep sorrow to grow inside him, a feeling he didn't quite understand, and not the first one he would have expected. There was also anger, thinking about Riddle's depraved memory hurting his Ginny and turning Hermione to stone, and this he wanted to know.

"He did." The man confirmed, tapping one heel against the floor. He sounded almost sorry to say it, though for Harry himself or for Riddle, Harry wasn't entirely certain. "Seven in total, if you counted your own body. He had meant for his murder of you to be his final horcrux, but as you are undoubtedly aware," at this point the man gave a slight chuckle, "it did not work out quite the way he had intended it to. Such people always underestimate love to their peril."

Harry did understand. He remembered his mother's spectre in the graveyard, and to when her protection burned Quirrel to ashes back when he was just eleven years old. He just nodded in agreement and closed his eyes. Love was a force of nature unto itself, transcending all worlds.

"It was madness, of course, to split your soul in such a way...but Riddle was desperate, he cared not for the consequences." The man finished.

"There was literally a piece of him inside me." Harry murmured. "Looking back on it, that explains so much. It's scary, to think I was bonded that deeply with the guy who killed my mum and dad...if only I had known that when I was alive..."

With that thought, all the questions he had been meaning to ask since his arrival in this strange purgatory returned to him. The fact that he was no longer alone, had someone who could answer his questions, made them all flood back.

He looked beseechingly at the man, "Why aren't they here? My parents? Wouldn't they come to welcome me into the afterlife? What is this place? I don't understand."

The man gave him a small smile that had no joy or humour in it; no, it was more close to grief than anything else. It looked as though he had answered these kinds of questions before, or that he was already aware of Harry's situation before Harry himself understood what had happened to him. His silver eyes looked a thousand years old in the ethereal light of the hallway.

"You must have tired of feeling that way," He said.

Harry gave a snort. "You could say that. Though it might be a bit of an understatement."

A pause. "I don't suppose you're willing to tell me?"

"That's what I'm here for...and more..." The man turned to the direction in the hall that Harry had been walking moments before. "Shall we walk while we reminisce?"

Harry considered for a moment before saying, "Sure." He strode over to the man's side, feeling strangely at ease with him, before they both turned and headed down the hall, forever leaving behind the twisted fragment of Riddle.

He felt fresh and cleansed, as though he had just stepped out of a bath.

The hallway seemed to get more...repaired, for lack of a better explanation, as they walked forward. Like they were entering a wing that had finally gotten its repairs, that other people were actually using. Harry wondered if other people had done this before him, because it looked like it was there as though waiting for something or someone to come.

"This place is a place where souls not ready to move on, but not remaining earthbound, have strayed in and out of for centuries." The man said, pulling Harry out of his thoughts.

"So it is purgatory...but why? Why here?" Harry asked.

"People became earth-bound spirits because they refused to give up petty grudges and old grievances. It is a sorry state, and many will remain trapped there, barred from the afterlife." The man said. "You would know some of them. There are many within the walls of Hogwarts...they decided that they would teach the next generations, so they would not end up like them."

Harry thought about Moaning Myrtle, Nearly Headless Nick, and the Bloody Baron, all familiar ghosts of the school he had called home. They all seemed rather unhappy, as if they were missing something important.

So they could never pass on? Never rejoin their old family and friends from their own times? Never leave the place where their deaths occurred? Watching generations of people just pass on by? That was a lonely thought.

"So they can never move on?" He asked. "That's...rather sad."

"They can only ascend once they've made peace with what happened to them before they died," the man replied as an explanation. "But most of them are too stubborn to let it go, or have done something that, if they acknowledged it, would earn them time in the underworld. So they remain there, thinking that this is...better, then their alternatives."

The man was silent for a moment, as though lost in a memory, before saying, "They are one sort of earthbound spectre. Now, there are some people who wish to return not for themselves, but for the ones that they love...selfless reasons...some dictated by prophecy, sometimes by fate, and sometimes by an inherit need for justice to be served. There have been fewer of these in recent times, but when they are called upon, amazing things can happen. These people ask for heavenly aide...and sometimes, they are granted help."

Harry remembered his words as he was being swept into the afterlife, words that had come from his very soul. The prophecy spoken, the fate of the world if Voldemort was to be its ruler. Calling out into the shadows, a simple plead that those he cared about could be safe...and the feeling that something had answered him.

"I think I understand that..." He said slowly. "That's what happened to me, isn't it?"

"Yes," The man responded. "You're a noble young man Harry Potter, and you died before your time on earth was meant to end. So now you have been called to this place, to right the wrongs done to you and many others, and to fulfil some of the things you were meant to do."

"Thank you," Harry said softly, looking up at the man and smiling. Then his brow furrowed, and he asked, somewhat confused, "but what exactly am I supposed to do?"

The man turned mostly sideways, though he kept walking. Harry realized that he was smiling, as though he hadn't heard anything like a joke in a long time. "You are here to train to become an avenging angel."

"Avenging angel?"

"A higher form of wizard who is sent back to life for a few years to right the wrongs that were done not only unto themselves, but unto others as well."

"So...like a solid form? Or a ghost?"

"You would be solid, as though you were alive. But once you have completed your tasks, you will disappear into the light and return to heaven."

Harry looked curiously at the man next to him for a moment. "Did you used to be one? Or are you the one who has to explain these things to them before they're sent down?"

"I was one, many years ago, unfortunately my tenure there resulted in a mistranslation of my deepest desire...leaving behind a lie that people have believed for centuries." The man said. There was a note of sorrow in his voice at this, almost as old as the memories he had.

Harry glanced at the man and looked him over, before comprehension dawned on him. There was one person related to Hogwarts who could likely have such a story told about them, one that he had thought evil himself prior to his death.

"You're Salazar Slytherin?" He asked.

The man tilted his head and then nodded slightly in confirmation.

"I didn't think that you would be my guide," Harry said in surprise. "I mean, no offence but I was in Gryffindor when I was in school."

Salazar's lip twitched into a smile for a second at this. "You were supposed to go into Slytherin, young man. But you were always doing things your own way...often for the better of it. You truly were a golden Gryffindor. Godric is proud that you were in his house."

Harry felt warm at the cheeks at this admission. Godric Gryffindor, glad that Harry was in his house. "Thank you."

He thought about the Daily Prophet's smear campaign against him, and all the Fudge had done over the year to try and make him out to be insane, dangerous, and untrustworthy, a manic attention seeker so that no one would believe him about Voldemort's return. He remembered how angry he had gotten whenever people made it clear that they believed what the Prophet and the Ministry was going on about, and the way that Umbridge had treated him.

He certainly sympathized with Salazar, about people telling lies about you. It was never fair and very frustrating, and that's when you were alive. Salazar had a lie that had followed him for centuries...one that everyone believed.

One that he himself had believed back when he was alive, he realized.

"You're referring to everyone believing that you advocated pure bloods and didn't think that muggleborns should learn at Hogwarts." Harry recalled, before looking at Slytherin in astonishment.

"That wasn't true?"

"No," Salazar whispered, continuing his pace down the hall. Harry had to put a little speed in his step to keep up. "It never was. I held no malice in my heart towards those of muggle blood, and I certainly never plotted to have them killed."

"Then what was the truth?" Harry asked.

"My mandate was that only the pure in heart should learn magic...because only ones who have no malice and cruelty inside them would use it well. Others would use it for torture and crime, as you have seen." Salazar explained.

He let out a long sigh, as though he were silently crying for those who were being lost to the darkness or out of weariness that people were still falling for an old noose. "Ambition is always a doubled edged sword Harry. It can drive people to do great good for the world...but it can also spur those with darker, less honest souls to do whatever it takes, no matter how vile, to reach what they think is their due."

"Like Tom Riddle did," Harry recalled. "And like the other Death Eaters who came out of your house. Like Malfoy, thinking that he should be able to own the world just because his has a fancy family name. That's twisted ambition."

"Yes. As an avenging angel I brought down my wrath on some muggleborns who killed my youngest sons. The mistranslations began there and have continued."

Harry turned that thought over in his head, their feet tapping the floor in tandem. "I'm sorry, Slytherin." He said. "You said I'm going to be an avenging angel?"

"Yes. You will have a higher form...and two years on earth to destroy all of Voldemort's anchors, allies, powers, philosophies and web. You will have to tear down prejudices that have festered within even the authority of the wizarding world ever since he went to school. Everyone who has wronged you...and your lady."

"Ginny..." Harry whispered. He looked at Slytherin. "Will I be able to interact with her?"

"Yes." Salazar looked seriously at Harry at this point. "You'd best give her some closure to your death..."

"I understand...when am I sent back?"

"When you complete your training. Then you will return to earth."

Harry nodded. "I understand. I will start now."

"Good," Salazar said softly. "Come this way." They had walked to the end of the hallway without Harry realizing it. Nodding at him, they turned and entered two large double doors and into the world beyond it.

Two Years Later

Two years.

A sixteen year old Ginny Weasley scraped the dirt of her knees and looked around the forest. She sighed in frustration, removing the cursed locket from around her neck. She looked down at it in disgust, angry with herself for starting to listen to the cursed whispering that the locket gave off at all times.

She had asked Hermione if they could do anything other then wear the damned thing, and the older girl explained that she had tried to leave it in the bottomless bag, she could still hear it, and it was more direct for them to handle it this way. So they never forgot what was making them think these things. Then she had gone to mark the calendar in their three person tent, and realized what day it was. Then neither of them were ready to speak for what felt like ages since.

She rubbed at the edges of her eyes with one scraped hand, determined not to cry once she realized what day it was.

Two years since Harry died. Two years since Voldemort had returned. Two years since everything had gone to hell.

It was a full on war. Ever since Harry had died, Voldemort had never bothered with subtly. He believed himself invincible now that Harry was gone, and he would attack full force to prove it. The Ministry was in ruins thanks to a series of attacks when she had been taking her fifth year at school. The streets were often chaotic thanks to random attacks by Riddle's men, often lead by that maniac Lestrange.

Hogwarts hadn't been attacked yet, and managed to remain one of the only safe places remaining in Britain, but it was only a matter of time.

Her family had to move into Grimmauld Place when the Burrow was attacked and burned down by Lestrange and her group. They'd been lucky to escape with their lives, and Ron had a number of burns on his back thanks to a close call with Friendfyre that the healers hadn't been able to remove. The bitter taste of the spell that killed Harry nearly killing her brother wasn't lost on Ginny.

Sirius had welcomed them in; he was more haggard and reckless then ever these days, with the death of his godson. Remus and Ginny had both done their best to comfort him and keep him from doing anything too stupid, and at least the people who resisted the Death Eaters now knew that he was not guilty of what they had thought for years, but it was only a matter of time before he did something that would get him seriously hurt or worse. At least he had Remus looking out for him when Ginny was out.

Hermione was the one who found out about the Horcruxes. She had gone snooping around in the Headmaster's office during her sixth year (yes, it was that very same Hermione that Ginny had known her entire life) suspecting Draco Malfoy of trying to assassinate the man, and stumbled across memories Dumbledore had kept.

Kept about Voldemort creating Horcruxes.

Which was why Hermione, Luna and Ginny were out here now.

Ron was staying back with his family. He wanted to fight Death Eaters head on, not wander around in the woods, chasing vague leads that might lead them to one of the things Voldemort was keeping his soul in. It wasn't direct enough for him, because he wanted payback.

Ginny wanted it too. But she differed chiefly in that she believed that destroying the Horcruxes, making Voldemort mortal again, was the best revenge she could wreak on the monster without directly confronting him, something that would likely kill her.

Ginny sighed and ran a hand through her messy red hair. She'd cut it short, and stopped caring about taking care of it at some point when this hunt started. Hermione nagged her about it sometimes, but mostly she felt that was the bushy haired witch's way of handling how her world had come crashing down around her, so she didn't begrudge her for it much.

She was just standing up when a brillant flash of gold lit up the sky. Gasping, she stared upwards as a beam of light descended into the centre of the city.

For some reason, just seeing it filled her with hope and energy.

End Chapter

So? How's that for a start?